I am older now; I have more than what I wanted, but I wish that I had started long before I did

[primroseburrows]

When I was in high school, we had to read things like Flowers for Algernon and other depressing fare.


Kids have it better in today's English classes.

What books did you have to read in school? Did you find books you'd read forever? What books did you hate? What about books from the outside? Is there one book that forever defines your youth? Is there one book you WISH your English teacher had used in his/her curriculum?

I really, really wish there'd have been more SF and Fantasy, but. Books like I Never Promised You a Rose Garden still haunt me. I don't know how many times I read it as a teenager, and I first discovered it (along with Go Ask Alice and Lisa, Bright and Dark) in my school's Resource Room (where I used to hang out, geekily, because d00d, teh Books).

Geez, it's no wonder I'm a psych nurse, with what I read as a kid. Of course, I also read Helter Skelter so many times that at one point I had memorised the first few paragraphs. *ponders*

Comments

[franzeska]

I would describe my school books as "depressing crap". My mother actually asked them to knock it off with the death and angst and was told that "real literature is depressing". We read some of these horrid things year after year.

My most hated list: Flowers for Algernon
The Crucible
The Lord of the Flies
The Lottery
The Veldt
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (out of all the Christie they could have chosen...)
The Tortilla Curtain

The last of those is the only one from high school. All of the others were inflicted on little grade schoolers. It's a good thing my mother had started reading to me when I was little because otherwise, I'd never have picked up a book again. If my future children's teachers are this stupid, we'll be having words.

I don't like depressing books, but I hate heavy-handed, moralistic, patronizing twaddle far more. Most of those were both.